The present invention relates to a knitting machine for manufacturing knitted goods.
Knitting machines of the foregoing type include needles movable in the direction of elongation thereof and plate elements or sinkers movable in the same direction and also pivotable. The needles and the sinkers are arranged in a needle carrier alternately near to one another and are adjustable by specific cam tracks or curves formed by the cams of the common cam support. More specifically, the invention relates to a knitting machine in which sinkers during the withdrawing movement of the associated needle at least partially longitudinally move in the opposite direction, and in which loop sinking cams for sinkers are adjustable by means of adjusting heads in the longitudinal direction of sinkers and needles to change stitch length.
The knitting machine with the aforementioned features has been disclosed in DE-OS 3,311,361 corresponding to applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 4,584,851.
The possibility of the common adjustment of the loop sinking cams for the sinkers has been known from DE-OS 3,433,290. In this known knitting machine, the division of the cam carrier into the needle cam carrier or support and a sinker cam support is necessary which makes the cam area of the knitting machine non-visible and requires large dimensions of the machine in the cam region and longer needle shafts whereas a compact structure of the cam area is impossible to make.